According to the Financial Times, Meta and Apple are in the final stages of negotiating settlements with the European Commission to resolve two high-profile cases under the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). The aim: avoid a series of escalating daily fines after the bloc fined the pair a combined roughly €700 million in April.
In April, the European Commission fined Apple €500m and Meta €200m for breaches of the DMA — Apple for App Store restrictions that limited developers’ ability to send users to offers outside the store, and Meta for a controversial “pay-or-consent” choice that tied tracking consent to an ad-free paid option. Both firms have since proposed business-practice changes to bring themselves into compliance.
If the Commission accepts a negotiated fix, both companies would avoid daily penalty payments that can compound over time — the Commission has warned periodic penalties can scale up to a large fraction of a company’s average daily worldwide revenue.
What the companies are actually negotiating
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Meta: Brussels wants clearer, easier navigation between the options Meta offers EU users — the so-called “pay-or-consent” model was judged non-compliant because it effectively pressured people to give tracking permission or pay. The Commission’s remaining sticking point is how clearly and prominently those choices are shown to users.
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Apple: The company already announced App Store policy changes in June (letting developers direct users to external offers and introducing alternative payment terms) and framed that move as a corrective step to avoid further fines. Apple’s compliance team has said it made the changes to avoid the threat of future significant fines. The Commission is still reviewing Apple’s updated developer terms.
The talks are happening amid heightened political heat: U.S. officials and the White House have signaled concern about rules they see as disadvantaging American tech firms, and President Trump has publicly threatened retaliatory measures if countries adopt rules he considers discriminatory toward U.S. companies. That diplomatic tension raises the stakes for a negotiated outcome that both sides can sell domestically.
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